Microsoft User Experience Blog : Windows Phone

App spreekuur bij Microsoft

Martin Tirion — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:26:28 GMT

Er is om de 2 weken op woensdagmiddag van 13:00 tot 17:00 een App spreekuur bij Microsoft op kantoor. Hier kan je door Technical Evangelists van Microsoft geholpen worden als je vragen hebt rond apps. Alles over Windows 8, de Windows Store, Windows UI style, Windows Azure, Windows Phone, enzovoort.

Stuur een mail naar nlw8dev@microsoft.com om je aan te melden. Het adres van Microsoft is:

Evert van de Beekstraat 354
1118 CZ Schiphol
(routebeschrijving hier)

Meer informatie is te vinden in deze blogpost.

SketchFlow for Windows Phone–The real one

Martin Tirion — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:46:14 GMT

It almost feels like the end of an era A while ago I posted an article on my own implementation of a project type to enable the use of SketchFlow for Windows Phone apps. I also send a link to this to my friends at the Expression team, who reacted “Wow! This is great. Now look at the specs we started on 10 days ago…”. Yep, they came up with the same idea. But of course they can do better than my attempt and the result is there now. Go to wp7sketchflow.codeplex.com you can download the new template.

To use this template you need a SketchFlow enabled version of Expression Blend (included in Expression Studio Ultimate and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate). You also need the Mango developer tools for Windows Phone (a more simple set of the downloads can be found here, where you only need the vm_web2.exe, the Web Platform Installer).

Once installed, fire up Blend and you’ll have the option to start a Windows Phone SketchFlow Application project:

Once started you see an initial map:

Search, Home and AppList are supporting screens with standard WP7 UI. You should focus on the screens of your own app, starting with Screen1. Of course you’ll want to use controls. The best option is to use the controls you can find under Controls, Mockups. There is a list of known items from Windows Phone like Panorama control and Pivot control. But also buttons, Map, Keyboard, ToggleSwitch and more.

The app is always a Silverlight application that’s being generated in the SketchFlow Player based on Silverlight. There is no phone emulator support in this project template.

If you have something that you want differently in the template, let the creators know on wp7sketchflow.codeplex.com.

How Windows Phone 7 and Bing Maps probably saved our lives

Martin Tirion — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:11:51 GMT

We went for a short vacation to Greece and decided to go for a boat-trip for a day by ourselves. A small boat for a small area around some small islands. Because of a very bad map, bad instructions, bad supplies and an error in navigation we ended up in the middle of open sea without fuel. Luckily I could use my Windows Phone to call the rental agency. They would pick us up. But … where were we?

I mentioned the navigation error, so we thought we were just below a specific island. But they couldn’t find us. We were drifting at (a more and more getting rough) sea for 4 hours and they still couldn’t find us. “Tell us what you see, describe the island you see” … but how to describe an island other than “rocks, trees, and no people or landmarks”. Imagine how we felt: winds picking up, waves getting higher, drifting away, cold, people looking for us but they were unable to find us. And this at the end of the day, so in a few hours the sun would set.

Now, Windows Phone has by default Bing Maps installed combined with use of GPS. To get this to work you need a GPS coordinates and an internet connection to retrieve the maps to show where you are. You need all of that at the same time. At sea we had phone contact most of the time, internet connection through GPRS sometimes. I have no idea how it works with retrieving GPS coordinates. But it didn’t come together until after 4 (long) hours.

I have never been this happy to see Bing Maps on my Windows Phone zoom into the map and show the yellow mark of our location. Immediately I called the guys looking for us and informed them of our location. Finally we were found and rescued!

The guy who picked us up told us we were very, very lucky. We were in open sea and big waves could have tipped our boat over. Big ships could have made waves that would have tipped the boat over. We dropped our anchor just before cliffs of an island (the small one to the right of the blue X) that would have damaged our small boat. The anchor line however was so thin that it could have snapped … and crashed our boat into the rocks of the small island.

So, Windows Phone and Bing Maps probably saved our lives. Talking about user experience …

SketchFlow for Windows Phone – How to add a panorama view

Martin Tirion — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:39:00 GMT

[As an exception on this blog this post is in English because this is of interest to a broader audience]

[UPDATE 16 June 2011 – A better, more advanced, project template has been released by the Blend product team. See my newer blogpost.]

In an earlier post I published the project template for Blend to enable a way to create a SketchFlow prototype for a Windows Phone application. This post adds information on how to go from there.
This post: how to add an a panorama view.

NOTE: an update was made to the project template ZIP-file. You will need that update to follow the rest of this post. You can download it from here. For installation instructions, see the first post.
In this update the background of LayoutRoot of the PhoneUI component was set to transparent.

Once you have created a project based on the template, create a new screen or select an existing screen like App Settings Screen. In this tutorial I’ll be using the App Settings Screen. For a detailed description how to create your own screen, take a look at the first post.

Now you need a panorama. Maybe you have drawn something the “old way” (you know, using paper and pencil). You can scan that image and use it. For this tutorial I use this sample I drawn myself (yes, you call me “Picasso” as well). It is a panorama showing 5 different groups of data.

The idea is to put this image in the PhoneUI and make it interactive, so the customer can get an idea of how it scrolls and even a way to go to another screen when content is clicked.

Drag the required image from Windows Explorer to the screen in Blend where the panorama or pivot should appear. I have chosen to add it to the standard App Start Screen. Once the image is placed make sure that it’s in the visual tree (Objects and Timeline panel) before PhoneUI, like so:

This way the image is visible within the phone UI window and the rest is outside of the phone. Position and size the image so that it aligns with the phone window. In this sample I’ve sized the image somewhat bigger to make sure the borders don’t appear in the phone’s window.

Now we want to simulate scrolling the panorama view. We can do this using SketchFlow Animation. If you don’t see this panel (it should be next to the SketchFlow Map tab), open the Windows menu from the menu bar and select SketchFlow Animation to make it visible.

In the SketchFlow Animation window, click the + sign to create a new animation.

A first frame is created. On the left side of the frame you see the duration of the starting animation (default 0,5 s) and the used easing function (default CubicInOut). At the bottom of the frame the duration to pause that frame is indicated (default pause is switched on and 1 s). In the top right corner of that frame-image is another + sign to add a frame after that one. Click it to create a second frame.

You are now position on the second frame and you are in recording mode (you can see that by the red border, the recording button on the design surface followed by the text “SketchFlowAnimation Frame 2 recording is on”). Move the image a bit to the left until “Spotlight” is visible in the phone window. Add another frame and move the image even further left to make Categories, New and Top visible as well.

After the five frames have been created, we want to tweak the animation a bit to make it have the feel of the scrolling on the phone. Change the pause duration of each frame to 0,5 s. This duration can be seen at the bottom of each frame. Now we want to change the easing function used for each frame. Click the easing function image (the box with the swirl in it before the frame). Select the Back Out (top of the list in the middle) easing function for each frame.

You can test the animation by clicking the Play button at the bottom of the SketchFlow Animation window. When you start the application in the SketchFlow Player and navigate to the App Settings Screen we used, there is an option there as well to play the animation.

The next step is to make it interactive. To do this we can put an invisible rectangle on top of the UI to trigger the animation. To do that make sure “Base” is selected in the SketchFlow Animation window first (on the left). Now draw a rectangle on top of the phone window, covering the Featured-sketch. If you still have the defaults set, the rectangle will have a fill-color and a stroke-color.

In the properties of the rectangle, select under Brushes “Stroke” and select the “No Brush” icon below that. After that select under Brushes “Fill” and, no matter what color, set the A to 0% (this is the alpha channel). We want to have a transparent brush. If there is no brush, it won’t respond to events like click.

Right click the rectangle in the Objects and Timeline window, select Play SketchFlow Animation and select App Settings Screen / SketchFlow Animation.

Now start the player again (F5 or Run Project in the Project menu), navigate to the App Settings Screen en click on the drawing. You’ll see the animation start. At anytime you click on that, the animation will start over.

If you want to make it a bit more fancy with a real design, you can do the same trick with another image of course. For instance, use this sample image from the Windows Phone Design Templates and do the same.

With all the text and the images this looks as a lot of work, but actually doing it is much faster. Maybe I’ll make a screencast for this … I’ll keep you posted

SketchFlow for Windows Phone – How to Add an Application Bar

Martin Tirion — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:22:42 GMT

[UPDATE 16 June 2011 – A better, more advanced, project template has been released by the Blend product team. See my newer blogpost.]

[As an exception on this blog this post is in English because this is of interest to a broader audience]

Once you have created a project based on the template, create a new screen or select an existing screen like App Settings Screen. For a more detailed description of the steps, look at the first post.

1. To add the gray transparent background for the application bar, just drag the Application Bar component in the SketchFlow Map to your selected screen. The application bar will appear on the UI. Now we need to do some base work to position the buttons.

2. Now we define rows in the grid of the UI, the LayoutRoot. This can be done visually by clicking in the blue area on the left of the phone UI to set the gridlines. Make sure that the bottom two rows are locked so they won’t move on resize. You can just click the lock-symbols for that.

You can also go to the grid definition in XAML and a this definition:

<Grid.RowDefinitions>
   <RowDefinition/>
   <RowDefinition Height="71"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="230"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>

3. We need a container for the buttons and we’ll use a StackPanel with Orientation Horizontal for that. Place the StackPanel on the UI in Row 1 of the LayoutRoot, so it’s on the same location as the application bar. Margins 0 and HorizontalAlignment set to Center.

You can also just add the StackPanel definition below in the XAML of the screen:

<StackPanel Margin="0" Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Center"
               Orientation="Horizontal"/>

4. Now add a button to the StackPanel. You can do this for instance by selecting the StackPanel and dubble clicking the Button tool. You can also select the Button from the Assets panel. It doesn’t matter if you choose the regular Button or the Button-Sketch.

Now right-click the created button, select Edit Template, Apply Resource and select AppBarButtonStyle.

Now the buttons has the size and the circle background you know from the phone.

To use an icon instead of the standard “Button” as content, you can use any of the icons available in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Icons\dark. Just drag one of these images to the button in Blend and it will be added to the project and embedded as content in the Button. This will result in something like this:

You can add interactivity to the button by using Navigate To for instance so it navigates to another page.

If you didn’t understand the process above or if you are experiencing a different outcome, take a look at the App Start Screen and check out the definition of the application bar there.

Using SketchFlow for Windows Phone Prototyping

Martin Tirion — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:46:09 GMT

[As an exception on this blog this post is in English because this is of interest to a broader audience]

[UPDATE 16 June 2011 – A better, more advanced, project template has been released by the Blend product team. See my newer blogpost.]

[UPDATE 31 March 2011 – Project template was updated with a minor fix (PhoneUI background transparent)
Installation instructions are modified with new download. You can also download the new version here.]

SketchFlow, which is part of Expression Blend, is a very powerful way to prototype your applications. By using SketchFlow in Blend and the SketchFlow Player for the customer it is so much easier to communicate about the functionality and the experience of an application in the prototyping phase of a project. And the prototype can be a solid base for further development all the way to production.

Out of the box SketchFlow can only be used for WPF or Silverlight. Windows Phone is not (yet) supported. But it can be as useful for phone apps as well. I was inspired by Episode 48 and Episode 49 of Silverlight TV on Channel9, where Janete Perez showed how to use SketchFlow for Windows Phone prototyping. But to me there were too many user actions required to get started.

To solve that problem with the current version of Blend, I have created a project template for prototyping Windows Phone applications with SketchFlow using the Silverlight engine. This provides a quick start for prototyping phone applications.

Once the project template is installed Blend will show an option to create a Windows Phone SketchFlow Application. As usual you can provide a name for your project. The template only supports C#, but this not used in prototypes most of the time. So don’t let that alarm or frighten you, especially when you’re a designer.

When the project is created you see a SketchFlow Map with a number of items on it.

There are three component screens (green) which contain standard elements and behavior for the phone’s start menu, the phone UI (hardware frame) and an application bar. These components can be used by other screens. The PhoneUI is normally used by every screen in the prototype. This component also contains handling for the Back button (navigate back) and the Menu button (navigate to Start Screen) on the phone.

For the start of the complete prototype I have chosen to show the typical Windows Phone start screen (Start Screen in gray on the map), where the user can start the application (the App Start Screen).

The blue items are all application screens. Three are defined by default in the project template: a start screen, an information screen and a settings screen. The three screens are just blank screens with some commenting notes on it, all set up to help you get started prototyping. The App Start Screen has an application bar with two buttons to navigate to the App Info Screen or the App Settings Screen.

How to install the template

Blend supports per user project templates besides it’s own templates. To keep that installation clean the description below installs the project templates in the user directory. Blend will automatically pick up that template.

To install the project template follow these steps:

Download WindowsPhonePrototyping.Templates.V1.1.Blend4.zip.
When on Windows Vista or Windows 7, unblock the zip-files to mark it safe.
To do this, right click the zip-file and select properties. In the properties dialog click the Unblock button.
Right click on the zip file and select Extract All.
Select your "My Documents" folder as the target for the extraction.
On Windows 7, it is c:\users\[username]\Documents.
Press the Extract button. Confirm that you want to merge the folders.

How to start with the template

To start using the template with SketchFlow you need Expression Blend with SketchFlow installed on your machine. To start with a prototype based on the template follow these steps:

Start Expression Blend.
Select File, New Project …
Under the Project Types open the Windows Phone branch and select SketchFlow.
In the list of projects select Windows Phone SketchFlow Application
Type the name for your project in the Name field and press OK.

You probably want to create more screens from here. New screens are always created with a default size as defined in the Options menu of Blend. To make sure that new screens have the same size as the other phone screens you can set that default to 583 pixels width by 1124 pixels height. This can also be done by right click in the SketchFlow Map on Start Screen and select Set as Default Navigation Screen Size. But be aware that this is the new default for all screens created in Blend. Of course you can always remove that default or reset it. Another option is to set the size of each new created screen by hand. To do that, set the size of the top-level object [UserControl] to 583x1124.

Once you created a screen you can add the PhoneUI but simply dragging the PhoneUI component in the SketchFlow Map to your new created screen.

Running the prototype

Because the project template is based on the SketchFlow template for Silverlight, a Silverlight application will start with the SketchFlow player containing your phone prototype. As the standard size of all the screens is 583x1124 it will not fit your monitor most of the time. Just use the zoom slider on the left hand side to zoom out to see to complete phone.

And now what?

Now it’s up to you to start prototyping. This can be done for instance by scanning drawings and fit them in the PhoneUI. You can even make parts of the drawing interactive. Or you can use the Sketch-style controls SketchFlow offers to build a UI.

Janete pointed to a great set of extra “tools” for prototyping, called Mockup controls. This is a set of sketch-style controls that are easy to use to build prototypes. For instance there is a login control containing a username and password field and some buttons. To get these controls read the blogpost of the Blend team to copy them from Blend OR go to Codeplex to have an easy install of the mockup library.

The current list of how to’s:

So, stay tuned … and let me know what you think of the template

Microsoft op Adobe User Group XL 2010

Martin Tirion — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:32:19 GMT

Woensdag 17 november wordt in de Meervaart in Amsterdam de Adobe User Group XL 2010 gehouden. Dit evenement is gericht op creatieven die op de hoogte gebracht willen worden van allerlei producten waarmee zij hun creatieve werk kunnen doen.

Microsoft is dit jaar gold sponsor van dit evenement. Naast dat we er met een stand staan worden er ook twee presentaties verzorgd.

Kat Holmes, Studio Director voor Windows Phone 7, geeft een presentatie over het ontstaan en de details van Metro, de user interface van Windows Phone 7. Ronnie Saurenmann van Microsoft Zwitserland praat in een creatieve presentatie over de toepassing van Deep Zoom op basis van zijn eigen ervaringen met onder andere Miss Switzerland en Kunsthaus Zürich.

We hebben ook een grote stand op het evenement waar je met al je vragen over Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, Expression Blend, Sketchflow, Deep Zoom en meer terecht kan. Bij de stand staan we ook met Xbox met Kinect, zodat je zelf kan ervaren wat het is om een controller te zijn.

Op www.microsoft.nl/aug is er informatie te vinden voor Adobe User Group leden en natuurlijk alle andere geïnteresseerden. Hier zijn ook links te vinden voor de verschillende producten en downloads.

De toekomst van Silverlight begint nu!

Martin Tirion — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:12:17 GMT

Benieuwd waar het nu eigenlijk naar toe gaat met Silverlight? Zijn er nog plannen met Silverlight? Wil je wat meer technische sessies rond Silverlight volgen? Dan moet je je zeker registreren voor het Silverlight Firestarter evenement dat 2 december 2010 is georganiseerd.

Het evenement wordt in bij Microsoft in Redmond gehouden, maar is ook online te volgen. Je hoeft je alleen maar te registreren op de Silverlight Firestarter website. Je kan de presentaties door middel van video volgen. Maar er wordt ook de mogelijkheid gegeven om te reageren, zodat je de discussie aan kan gaan met het Silverlight product team.

In de keynote zal Scott Guthrie ingaan op de toekomst van Silverlight. In die keynote wordt ingegaan op Silverlight 5, de volgende versie van Silverlight.

Daarna zijn er nog verschillende technische presentaties die ingaan op aspecten zoals databinding, communicatie, MVVM en performance. Ook is er sessie die laat zien hoe een goede installatie van Silverlight voor de gebruiker verzorgd kan worden, waar ik al eerder over geblogd heb.

Dus registreer je nu, het is gratis. De vragen die je eventueel hebt over de toekomst van Silverlight zullen hier zeker beantwoord worden.

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools uitgekomen

Martin Tirion — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:48:19 GMT

De definitieve versie van de Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools zijn uitgekomen. Het complete pakket van tools is gratis. In dit pakket vind je:

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone Emulator
Phone Registration Tool

De Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools zijn hier te vinden.

Als Visual Studio 2010 al aanwezig is op je systeem, dan zijn er na installatie van de Developer Tools templates zichtbaar voor het maken van Windows Phone 7 applicaties.

Bij de release is nu ook het Silverlight Panorama control geleverd. De Silverlight Toolkit bevat nu ook WP7 specifieke controls zoals ContextMenu, DatePicker, TimePicker, WrapPanel, ToggleSwitch en GestureService.

Hulp voor het maken van Windows Phone 7 applicaties is onder andere hier te vinden:

Windows Phone 7 Developer Hub evenement

Martin Tirion — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:35:56 GMT

Op woensdag 2 juni hebben we in Utrecht een evenement georganiseerd rond Windows Phone 7 development. We hebben een aantal interessante sprekers geregeld voor dit evenement. Ben Riga, Senior Technical Evangelist. Hij was verantwoordelijk voor alle demo’s tijdens de MIX. Yochay Kiriaty, Senior Technical Evangelist, verantwoordelijk voor Phone 7 evangelisatie. Maarten Struys MVP heeft jaren ervaring in het ontwikkelen op het gebied van Mobile en Floor Mesters is een ervaren User Experience Consultant. Er zullen ook Windows Phone 7 telefoons aanwezig zijn, zodat de ervaring van de nieuwe telefoon ook beleefd kan worden.

Meer informatie over het evenement en de mogelijkheid om je aan te melden is hier te vinden.

De agenda van die dag is als volgt:

Welkom

De visie van Microsoft over het Windows Phone 7 platform.
We vertellen de visie over ons nieuwe platform. Waarom zijn we een andere weg ingeslagen. Wat is de gedachte gang achter het gekozen ontwerp, waar willen we naar toe en hoe zien we voor ons waar de markt heen gaat. Welke kansen zijn er voor bedrijven, developers en designers met Windows Phone 7. Uiteraard met een demo van de telefoon.

Design voor Windows Phone 7
In deze sessie laten we zien hoe eenvoudig het is om een goede user experience voor de gebruiker te ontwerpen. We maken gebruik van de nieuwe Expression tools. Na deze sessie ben je in staat om snel te beginnen zelf mooie ontwerpen te maken voor Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone development met Silverlight
In deze sessie aandacht voor de platform architectuur en de tools. Het programmeermodel, input mogelijkheden met de verschillende sensoren en push notifications.
Naast een goed overzicht van de mogelijkheden laat deze technische sessie laat de diverse mogelijkheden van het platform zien aan de hand van een aantal demos en code voorbeelden.

Windows Phone development met XNA
Wat zijn de mogelijkheden van het XNA platform. Wanneer gebruik je XNA ten opzichte van Silverlight. Hoe kan een gamedeveloper gebruik maken van het XNA platform voor het ontwerpen van games op de telefoon. Hoe verhoudt dit zich ten opzichte van development op de PC of Xbox. Maar deze sessie geeft ook inzicht in hoe een Silverlight developer gebruik kan maken van de XNA bibliotheken wanneer er Silverlight applicaties op de telefoon worden gebouwd.

Tips en Tricks plus best practices

In deze sessie geven we je alvast tips en tricks om snel te kunnen beginnen. We vertellen je onze ervaring tot nu toe met Windows Phone 7 zodat we jou kunnen helpen bepaalde valkuilen te mijden.

Windows Phone Marketplace

We vertellen hoe de marketplace werkt. Wat zijn de mogelijkheden voor developers. Wat zijn de verdienmodellen. Kortom, hoe kunt u geld gaan verdienen met Windows Phone 7

Q&A

Zijn er onderwerpen niet aan bod gekomen? Heb je nog prangende vragen? We nemen uitgebreid de tijd om zoveel mogelijk vragen te beantwoorden zodat iedereen naar huis kan gaan met alle informatie die hij of zij nodig heeft.

Aanrader – Boek “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series”

Martin Tirion — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:07:51 GMT

Charles Petzold werkt aan een boek met de titel “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series”. Aangezien de technologie nog niet definitief is, is het boek ook nog niet af. Maar de eerste 6 hoofdstukken van de voorlopige versie van het boek zijn nu gratis te downloaden.

De hoofdstukken die zijn opgenomen in deze voorlopige versie maken je bekend met de omgeving (“Phone Hardware + Your Software en Hello”, “Windows Phone”). Het tweede gedeelte gaat in op het gebruik van Silverlight voor Windows Phone (“Code and XAML” en “Presentation and Layout”). Het derde gedeelte gaat in op het gebruik van XNA (“Principles of Movement” en “Textures and Sprites”).

Een goede start dus om in deze omgeving aan de gang te gaan. Ga naar http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/ en kies voor de PDF of XPS.

MIX10 Nieuws – Windows Phone 7 Series applicaties met Silverlight en XNA

Martin Tirion — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:12:02 GMT

De keynote op dag 1 van de MIX in Las Vegas ging voornamelijk over Windows Phone 7. Waarom? Het platform om applicaties te maken voor die omgeving is XNA (bekend van Xbox) en Silverlight!

In de keynote werd getoond hoe eenvoudig met Visual Studio 2010 of met Blend 4 een Windows Phone applicatie gemaakt kan worden. Als je al bekend bent met Silverlight development zag het er eigenlijk helemaal niet spannend uit … het was al gelijk bekend en vertrouwd. En dat is nu juist de kracht van de strategie. Niet verschillende versies en tools, maar een consistent platform voor een reeks aan toepassingen. Of het nu op de PC is, op het web of op de telefoon, dezelfde tools, mogelijkheden, programmeertalen, enzovoort. Uiteraard is de ondersteuning uitgebreid met telefoon-specifieke zaken.

Er is een nieuwe website opgezet voor Windows Phone developers op http://developer.windowsphone.com/. Daar is informatie te vinden over het hoe en wat en de tools. Daarnaast is er ook een Windows Phone Marketplace op gezet waar applicaties gedeeld en gedownload kunnen worden.

Alhoewel Windows Phone 7 Serie nog niet is uitgekomen, is het al wel mogelijk om met de beta’s en release candidates van de verschillende producten applicaties te ontwikkelen. Bij Visual Studio 2010 en Blend 4 wordt een Windows Phone 7 emulator meegeleverd. Deze emulator draait binnen een virtuele omgeving, en is dezelfde runtime als op de telefoon gebruikt zal worden. Wel is de runtime dan gekoppeld aan de hardware van de PC. Als je bijvoorbeeld een multi-touch scherm hebt, kan je dit ook gelijk voor de emulator gebruiken om de applicatie te testen. Dit komt trouwens goed overeen met implementaties op telefoons straks, want de omgeving, inclusief voor applicaties, maakt optimaal gebruik van de hardware.

De tools voor ontwikkeling van Windows Phone 7 applicaties gaan overigens gratis beschikbaar komen. Door het gebruik van Visual Studio 2010 Express in combinatie met Expression Blend 4 Phone editie is het dan mogelijk applicaties te ontwikkelen. Een meer eenvoudige instap kon niet bedacht worden.

Ga naar http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7-series/ voor de informatie en download van tools om al vandaag met de spullen aan de gang te gaan. En als je een coole applicatie hebt ontwikkeld, laat het dan even weten!